KCDwKCDw has been developing software for more than 20 years, dealing with the small to medium-sized cabinet shops. But KCDw's clientele has branched out during the last several years as have its products.

"KCDw has always dealt with the small to medium-sized cabinet shops and what really has changed in the last couple of years is that those small to medium-sized cabinet shops are buying CNC equipment in droves," said company spokesman Leslie Murphy. "They're buying lots of it. The big people already own it, so we've been dealing with all the CNC questions and aspects, increasing over the last four or five years. But in the last year or so, it's really gone through the roof. So we've spent most of our development effort simplifying the CNC set up."The KCDw recently released Version 8 of its software.

"Probably the majority of our software is going for closets," said Murphy. "We [also] have many, many customers that are commercial cabinetmakers. That's a large piece of the market. I would say we are 65 percent residential customers and the rest would be different forms of commercial construction."

The small to medium-sized shops have been a target of KCDw since Day One, and that has not wavered. The thing that has changed with the smaller shops is that they are now buying high-tech CNC equipment. Five years ago it was very rare for a small shop to own it, according to Murphy.

The software business is a competitive one, but Murphy said KCDw had two distinct advantages over the competition.

"Ours is ease of use and its power. KCDw can make custom, very, very, very custom cabinets in just minutes where everyone else takes hours. It's a huge difference on ease of use â€” and that's where we shine. It seems like most of the other software packages out there don't consider that the most valuable thing that the cabinetmaker has is their time. We think that if we can save them time they can go out and do something else with it."

ETemplate SystemsETemplate Photo was introduced in 2001 and is currently in its 10th upgrade. The program provides users with a method of measuring both simple and complex as-built spaces in 3D using digital photography. The output of the system is 3D CAD data.